


That Whole Father/Son Thing

by mysterytour



Series: Long Lost Fam [2]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Depression, Drama, F/M, Family Feels, Father-Son Relationship, Grief/Mourning, Holocaust, Post-X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), Sibling Love, X-Men: Apocalypse Spoilers, bonding over tomato plants, dadneto, retro music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 12:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11335830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysterytour/pseuds/mysterytour
Summary: "Part of Erik doesn’t wasn’t to climb out of the well of depression and live in the world without Nina and Magda. How can he smile or laugh again when they can never smile or laugh ever again?  He feels like ash caught in the chimney stacks. Everything is exhausting."Peter cooks for Erik. Jean grows some tomato plants.





	That Whole Father/Son Thing

**Author's Note:**

> CW for:  
> Depression  
> Suicidal ideation  
> The Holocaust  
> References to violence
> 
> Spoilers for Apocalypse and DofP

‘I’m glad you’ve come back, Erik, I really am,’ Charles glances at the clock on the mantelpiece. 2AM. ‘I know how terribly hard things have been for you.’

Erik stares at a spot on the carpet, eyes red and vacant. Charles had thought he was starting to cope with what had happened. Evidently, he was wrong. 

‘I can’t do it, Charles, I… even in _there_ ,’ Erik pulls up his sleeve. The numbers on his forearm have faded since the last time Charles saw them. Blurred a little more. ‘even after everything that happened, I still wanted to survive…’

Charles reaches across the space between them, ‘May I?’

Erik shrugs.

Charles holds Erik’s forearm and runs his thumb across the line of numbers. It occurs to him that he has never been able to remember the sequence it is as if a fresh line arranges itself every time he sees them, ‘Have you been thinking about it more than usual?’ 

Erik nods, ‘I thought tearing it down would… but it changed nothing.’

’You can tear down buildings, but no one can erase what happened inside them.’

Erik pulls away and brushes the tears out of his eyes. ‘I can live with it. I just can’t live without _them_. Nina should be ten this year… I thought about killing myself, but I… I don’t know.’

‘You have a great many things to live for. More than you know.’ Charles says, kindly, ‘Why don’t you get some sleep? We can talk properly tomorrow.’

‘Of course.’ Erik shifts in his seat and looks at the clock. ‘I didn’t realise the time.’

‘It’s quite alright.’ Charles tell him. He wants to take his hand, but knows better than to try. ’And Erik? I will help you work through this. I promise you that.' 

 

*

 

Almost everyone is outside enjoying the weather. She can see them all in her mind’s eye: Hank reclining in a deckchair, reading a novel, getting to an exciting part; the younger kids playing a game of tag, the exhilaration of being chased; Kurt at the top a tree and Raven on the ground trying not to worry about how high he is. Jean herself is lying on the lawn some distance away from the mansion. She is awash with their joy and contentment.

A shadow passes over her face. Jean opens her eyes, ‘Oh, hey, Pete.’

There is only one person who Jean can’t hear coming from miles away, and that is Peter Maximoff. The interlude between Peter deciding that he wants to be somewhere and arriving is so minute that it is impossible for Jean to perceive. He regularly takes her by surprise and she never knows what he’s thinking. She likes that about him.

‘Do you wanna go somewhere? I’m bored out of my mind.’ Peter says, looking frustrated.

‘No, I don’t.’ Jean smiles and pats the grass beside her. 

Peter shrugs and lies down, ‘So apparently Erik rocked up at like 2AM last night.’ 

‘I know,’ says Jean, who knows everything about everyone.

‘I think I might tell him, soon.’

‘Good for you,’ Jean closes her eyes again. 

‘So…’

‘So what?’

‘I thought you were a mind reader.’

‘Your thought process are way too fast. Your brains sounds like a sonic boom, to me,’ Jean glances at Peter out of the corner of her eye. He looks thrilled with her choice of words. ‘Although sometimes you slow down enough.’

‘Really? Like when?’

‘When you’re listening to music, for instance.’

‘Cool. Do you know what I’m thinking now?’ 

Jean starts singing along to the song playing through Peter’s head, ‘Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar, you’re gonna go far…’ 

The song pauses. Peter is smiling broadly, now. When the song resumes they sing it together:

‘They call it riding the gravy tra-a-a-a-ain.’

‘What was that?’ Jean laughs.

‘Jesus Christ, Jean, educate yourself. It’s Pink Floyd.’

‘I know _The Wall_.’

‘Of course you do, you live in a school. So what do you listen to?’

‘Supertramp, Yes… Rick Wakeman.’

‘My sister likes Rick Wakeman; she’s got all his records.’

‘I’ve _Journey To The Centre Of The Earth_ and the _Six Wives Of Henry VII._ ’

‘Oh. Hey, you know Tubular Bells, right?’

‘I’ve actually been meaning to check it out.’

The whole song comes at her at once.

 

*

 

The first thing Peter notices about Erik when he runs into him in the hallway is how slowly he walks.

‘Yo Erik, how’s it going?’ he asks his father.

‘Alright, I suppose.’ Erik says, which isn’t the truth at all. He talks slowly, too.

‘Cool. It’s nice to see you again.’

Erik seems confused, ‘Really?’

‘Yeah. I mean,’  Peter waits for a bunch of noisy kids to pass them by, ’the world destroying thing wasn’t really…you.’

‘It _was_ me.’ Erik says insistently. 

‘But you were brainwashed, right?’

‘I probably would have done it anyway.’ 

‘Well. It’s still nice to have you around. You know, since I moved to the mansion things are going really well for for me, so maybe thing’ll get better for…’ Peter stops because Erik’s eyes have dropped to the floor, he clearly isn’t listening, ‘Uh, Erik?’

‘Hm?’

‘Nothing, never mind. Well, I hope you feel better soon, dude.’

Erik nods and carries on his way.

Peter decides to wait a little while before dropping the you-are-my-father bomb.

The little while turns into a month.

*

Recovery is going to be difficult; that’s what Charles told him to expect, and it’s true. Part of Erik doesn’t wasn’t to climb out of the well of depression and live in a world without Nina and Magda. How can he smile or laugh again when they can never smile or laugh ever again? Erik almost wishes that he _had_ torn the world to pieces. How dare it carry on turning when they are gone forever? 

Then there’s the other part. The part that refused to sink under a bought of dysentery so brutal it almost got him sent to the gas chambers.

He feels like ash caught in the chimney stacks.

Everything is exhausting.

*

Erik has started shaving regularly, again, so Peter decides now is the time to finally tell him the truth. The next time he runs into him is at breakfast. Hank is there, too, reading a manual of some sort. _Good_ , he thinks, _it’ll be easier if it’s not just me and Erik_. Peter makes himself a (very big) bowl of cornflakes and sits down opposite his father. Erik’s attention is transfixed on broadsheet newspaper (although he seems to be staring blankly rather than actually reading it) and he doesn’t even look up.

‘So uh,’ Peter cleared his throat, ‘That whole thing with Mystique being Kurt’s mom. Pretty weird, huh?’

‘Hm? Yes,’ Erik says, without so much as looking up from the page.

Hank picks up his plate and moves to leave. 

‘Sit down, Hank,’ Peter tells him.

Hank sits down.

Peter makes a start on the cereal, which had already started going soggy, ‘Speaking of long lost children,’ he said in between mouthfuls, ‘you’d never guess who my father is.’

‘Mm.’ 

‘It’s you.’

Erik continues staring at the paper.

‘Erik?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Erik blinks, ‘were you talking to me?’

‘I’m definitely not talking to Hank.’

Hank stops mid chew. A look of total panic crosses his face.

‘Yeah.’

‘Are you quite serious?’

‘Also I have a twin sister. Have a nice day!’ Peter finishes his cereal, washes up the bowl and gets the hell out of there before anyone can so much as blink.

 

*

 

Erik has to get out of the mansion. He walks for a very long time. Somehow he ends in the woods. Ignoring the path he walks into the scrub and sits down at the foot of an old ash tree. Grey light breaks though the canopy, just as it had on the day Nina and Magda died. He digs his fingers into the leaf litter. Deep inside the earth, past the top soil, past the water table and clay deposits underneath, he can feel metal deep inside the bedrocks, but it is much too far away, too entangled in ores and he can do nothing with it.

He might have questioned the truth of what Peter told him, but he loves him now, so has to be true. He loves his daughter, too, even though he doesn’t know anything about her, including her name. 

This is the best news Erik’s had in many years, but it shatters him.

 

*

 

The next time Peter sees Erik he’s sitting at the kitchen table, staring vacantly at the refrigerator. 

‘Have you eaten?’ Peter asks him.

Erik looks a little bewildered by such a mundane question. ‘No.’

‘Well, I’m making dinner so uh, I might as well…’ Peter picks a pan off the draining board and starts getting things out of the food cupboard. ‘I gotta warn you though, I’m a shitty cook. How does mac ’n’ cheese sound?’

‘Good, thank you. I uh,’  now that he knows that Peter is his son Erik doesn’t really know what to say to him, ‘I noticed that you like music.’

‘Yeah, do you?’

‘No.’ 

‘Do you have any hobbies?’

‘I suppose… reading. Do you?’

‘Nah, I don’t really have the patience.’

They eat in silence. 

 

*

 

Wanda’s just getting out of the shower when she hears the front door go. She finds her brother cross legged on her bedroom floor, thumbing through her record collection. ‘Did I say you could let yourself into my house and start touching my shit?’ she snaps.

Peter pulls out _1984_ and starts reading the track list, ‘I told Erik about us. Can I borrow this?’

‘You don’t like Rick Wakeman.’ 

‘It’s for a friend.’

Wanda pulls the towel out of her hair and throws it at Peter’s head. He sits there on the floor with the towel on his head, reading the back of the record. The image is far too funny for Wanda to stay mad at him for long, ‘Okay, fine.’ 

Peter pulls out Jeff Wayne’s _War of the Worlds,_ ‘This is actually a good record, but that I know that can’t be right ‘cause _you_ like it.’

‘Get over yourself, Peter.’ 

‘Don’t you have anything to say about Erik?’

‘I already told you, I’m not interested.’

‘Alright.’ Peter takes the towel off his head and throws it at his sister, who catches it and wraps it around her hair again.

‘You’re gonna make her a mixtape, right?’ Wanda asks.

‘I guess.’

‘Because nothing sends sends a clear message like a mixtape.’

‘I will, then.’ And then he adds sincerely, 'Thanks for the advice.’

Wanda crosses her arms, ‘Well, I’m gonna get changed.’

‘Okay. Hug before I go?’

‘Watch my tits, though; they’re killing me today,’ Wanda leans over and lets her brother pat her on the back.

‘Love ya, bitch,’ he tells her.

‘Love you, too, asshole,’ she tells him.

 

*

 

It’s easier when there’s no impetus to talk. Peter makes cooking for Erik a regular thing, and sometimes Erik cooks for him. Eventually, they start meeting at the breakfast table, too. He eats slowly to make it last longer.

 

*

 

One day Jean gives Erik a packet of spinach seeds. The gesture is perplexing at first, and they sit on his beside cabinet for several days.

He plants them in a couple of seedling trays in the greenhouse. It feels good to have dirt under his nails after all this time. Every day he waters them carefully and inspects them for signs of germination. On the sixth day he finds tiny green specs curling out of the earth. Weeks pass. He watches the leaves change in shape as they grow. He sees Jean there almost daily - she has twelve tomato plants on the go. They talk about gardening and eat the tomatoes raw. 

Erik used to love growing things, until it was taken from him, along with Nina and Madga. It is such a mundane thing to get back, but Erik is beyond grateful. 

Eventually, reading starts to come back, too. 

 

*

 

Peter turns up at Jean’s door with a couple of records and a mixtape. He doesn’t ask to come in.

Jean lets him go and checks out the tape. On the sleeve: track title, album, musician, written in careful capital letters. She slips it into her walkman, puts on her headphones and presses play. Immediately she is carried away by the narration: 

_‘No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century t_ _hat human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space…’_

She listens to the whole thing lying on her bed, grinning from ear to ear.

The mixtape speaks volumes. 

 

*

 

Not long ago, but very far away, a little girl named Nina was shot and killed. Peter didn’t even know she existed until after her death. The better he gets to know Erik, the more he feels that she was his sister.

One night he dreams about losing his younger sister in a dense forest. She’s in high school now, but in the dream she’s a child again. It’s so dark he can hardly see. He finds her in pieces: a finger here, a foot there. He tries gather them up but they keep falling out of his hands.

Peter wakes not long before the alarm is due to go off, feeling utterly miserable.

After Danger Room practice he picks up the telephone and gets her to tell him about her day. Her voice is comforting.

 

They’ve always been close.

 

*

 

One day Erik hugs Peter in the common room. Peter is beyond uncomfortable but doesn’t have the heart to cut it short. It seems to go on forever. Erik trembles.

 

*

 

Eventually conversation starts to come naturally. Erik doesn’t talk about himself much (or at all). Mostly he talks about the news, politics. Sometimes he talks about his regrets: how he’s treated Raven over the years, some of the choices he’s made.

Peter wants to ask Erik about his family. Instead he offers up information about his own: how he used to pick up his little sister from school because their mother worked such long hours; how much his relationship with Wanda has improved since they both moved out. He even tells Erik that the X-Men money meant that his mom didn’t have to work two jobs anymore (even though she hates him being in the X-Men, she seems happier), and how proud it makes him feel, and Peter isn’t usually one to talk about feelings.

Erik still doesn’t ask about them. Peter wonders if it’s because of Wanda.

 

*

 

Erik wants desperately to ask Peter about Wanda. He doesn’t.

 

*

 

One day Jean brings Peter tomatoes from the greenhouse. He eats them raw, even though he hates the texture of raw tomatoes, because she grew them.

 

*

 

Charles Xavier is exactly the kind of person who has a yacht and wouldn’t think to mention it, and Hank is exactly the sort of person who could teach himself to drive one. Towards the end of the summer break he takes the older kids and adults out on the ocean. It’s a hot day and the sea is sparkling.

Spending great lengths of time with Erik is still weird so Peter spends most hanging around with Jean and the others. Naturally, he can’t resist the temptation to go for a run. The salt water feels great under his feet. He wishes he could share the experience with someone but there’s no one else on Earth who can think or do things as fast as he can. 

He runs onto a cruise liner and drinks a woman’s cocktail out of her hand. It’s well into the evening by the time he gets back to the yacht.

Jean is leaning over the railing, shielding her face against the sunset. Everyone has assembled along side her, Even Erik.

Peter taps her on the shoulders, noticing how they’ve caught the sun. 

Jean turns around and smiles at him, ‘I was hoping you’d get back in time - there’s something I want you to see.’

Peter gets himself a couple of beers out of the cool-box.

‘Come on! You’ll miss it!’

Peter bites the insides of his cheek and maneuvres himself into the space between Erik and Jean, but it’s tight and their elbows touch. Neither of them tries to move away. Peter passes a bottle to Erik, who pops the top off with his powers and sends it skittering across the ocean.

‘Keep your attention on the sun,’ Jean continues, ‘just before it disappears under the horizon you’ll see like, a green flash. You can only see it when you’re out at sea.’

‘How do you know that?’ Peter asks.

‘I read it in this thing called a “book”.’

Peter fake laughs and sticks his tongue out at her, ‘This had better be good, Grey.’

‘You’ll love it, I promise. It’ll be over so fast most of us probably won’t even see it.’

Peter likes fast.

The sun ripples in the warm, rising air and…

Just as the sun sinks into the into the horizon it happens. It turns iridescent, brilliant green. The moment seems to last forever, and yet it is over too soon. He continues to stare at the sky and water for a long time after.

‘Did you see it?’ Erik asks him.

Peter sips his beer and tries to loosen the lump in his throat, ‘Yeah. You?’

‘I think so.’

‘Did you?’ he asks Jean.

‘No, actually.’ Jean admits.

‘Can I show you?’ he says, so that only she can hear.

‘I’d love that.’ 

Peter shows her. He makes the image last for a long time.

When it’s over Jean catches his eyes and squeezes his hand, ‘That was beautiful. Thank you.’ 

Her eyes look so lovely in the twilight. 

They stand in silence for some time, enjoying the view and each other’s company. After a while Erik says to Peter, ‘Nina would’ve loved you.’

‘Too right. I would've let her put scrunchies in my hair.’

Erik chuckles sadly.

Peter sips his beer again and extends an arm around his father’s shoulders,  ‘You know what? I would have loved her, too.’ 

The sky fades to a deep sea-green. A gust of wind drags cool evening air over the boat. Erik shivers. His son squeezes him tighter.

**Author's Note:**

> Fic playlist on Spotify:
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/user/jolinare/playlist/3V6CZaysqXOQKMM22LCT1N?si=vLONvutZQUizG2MILhfmaQ
> 
> Discography:
> 
> Have A Cigar, Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd  
> The Eve Of The War, War Of The Worlds, Jeff Wayne  
> 1984, The Six Wives Of Henry VII and Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, Rick Wakeman, who is good and wears a cape.  
> Tubular Bells Part 1, Mike Oldfield


End file.
